In a speech on Monday, the prime minister said: “We will ensure that people can enjoy five extra healthy, independent years of life by 2035.” That’s a grand aspiration for genuinely progressive governments – but there’s surely a credibility gap when this pledge comes from the first PM under whose administration life expectancy in deprived areas, according to the Office for National Statistics, has actually fallen.
Martin Rees
Cambridge
• Much as I enjoy reading recipes in Feast, why must they always be for four, or six people, very occasionally for two? Living on my own, I want recipes for one. It is easy enough to do twice or thrice the quantities, very difficult indeed to use, say, a quarter of an egg.
Elisabeth Leedham-Green
Cambridge
• Marks & Spencer axing 100 stores (Report, 23 May)? Will the ravens leave the Tower of London next?
Margaret Kitchen
Downholland, Lancashire
• As Bill Hicks said of humanity, we’re a virus with shoes (The 0.01%: how we eradicated most other living things, 22 May).
Alasdair McKee
Lancaster
• No need for confusion. If you are supine, you are lying on your s-pine (Corrections, 22 May).
Jane Green
Oxford
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters